Kate on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Madrid Spain

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The Spirit Gets The Credit 3/23/2015

Dear Family,

This morning Hermana Seegmiller (one of the Hermanas we live with) turned to me and said, "I wish we could put a little camera on you everywhere you go, so we can see the full adventures of Hermana Kelemen." She laughs at everything I do. Like, even if I am just breathing…

But I liked her comment, I wish I did have a camera so you guys could see my life here. Missions are a weird thing. The more you think about them, the weirder they are. So many weird things happen, and you meet the weirdest people. This week as we were walking to our next appointment I turned to my companion and just said, "You are really the only person who really will ever understand what we are going though." I mean I can write and tell you all about it, but really you will never fully understand. Serving a mission really makes you think about other peoples missions... you really will never know.

Missionary work is amazing. The spirit is so real. I think people think of missionaries as these really great righteous people, like Aaron and Ammon. And yes they were great, but let me tell you really how it is.

The people here love the missionaries, they look up to the missionaries and they come to us with questions and in times of need. A couple conferences ago one of the seventy gave a talk called "Ask The Missionaries". That talk becomes kinda scary when you actually are a missionary. But people do, people come and ask the missionaries. But WHY? Let's be honest. Were are children. We don't have a lot of experience in life. For half of us it's our first time out of the house, for most it's their first time out in the county. We really don't know much.

But they trust us. They come to us. These 40 year old people, these adults come to us 19 year old kids with their problems and ask for help. Really when you step back. It doesn't make sense. The only answer I really have for it all is the spirit. The spirit does amazing things.

For example we were talking to one of my favorite members, Edison, last night. His mom died when he was young and his father and him have never gotten along. He really has had such a hard, hard life; like everyone here in Spain. With the spirit we answered his questions and helped his needs. After it was over I just took a second to think. How did we do it? I don't understand what he is going though, not at all. I think about my life and really the only thing I could have said that would have been kinda similar is, "I am sorry your mom passed away, I know how you feel... one time one of our chickens died." Psych. It's not similar at all. We don't need to know everything, really all we need to do is know how to work with the spirit. I have learned this week that the spirit is a lot more powerful than we give it credit for.

Other adventure for the week:

We taught Fransico our deaf investigator and then his sister came... she too was deaf. As we got going in the lesson Fransico's other friend joined us. And before we knew it we were teaching three deaf people. Honestly, I thought to myself, "where are all these deaf people coming from?" Fransisco's friend and sister belong in some other religion and honestly all they wanted to do was Bible bash. Hermana Toone and I where getting frustrated. Who knew three deaf people could over take a conversation. Anyways, it was a wild lesson and there came a point where I was frazzled, looking up scriptures and then I took a second to think about what was happening and I then started to laugh. I need to learn to control my laughing. As my companion reminds me everyday "Hermana Kelemen laughing is universal. People know when you are laughing even if they don't speak English." But I couldn't help it the whole situation was so bizarre and I thought... of course, this is Kate kind of a thing to happen. Well we can't teach them anymore, not until they will actually want to be taught. But it was a good experience. Not many can say on their mission they taught three deaf people all at once.

Thanks so much for your prayers!

I love you!

Love, Hermana Kelemen

This is what Madrid really looks like. I will send you fancy pictures sometimes, but this is what it really looks like.

And this... this is the metro. We thought we would take a picture with this guy. Everyday we get to bond with this fun metro.